What do you do if you want to master content creation skills for podcasting?

If you aspire to master content creation skills for podcasting, it's imperative to start by learning the basics thoroughly. This involves familiarizing yourself with the technical aspects of podcast production, such as recording and editing audio, understanding different microphone setups, and mastering sound mixing techniques. Merely acquiring technical skills without a clear understanding of storytelling, audience engagement, and topic selection can result in lackluster content that fails to captivate listeners. Therefore, aspiring podcasters must strike a balance between honing their technical abilities and cultivating their creative and storytelling skills.

Firstly, investing time in researching and understanding your target audience is crucial for developing relevant and engaging content. However, while thorough research is fundamental, it's equally important to avoid falling into the trap of producing content solely based on popular trends or topics. Authenticity is the key component of a successful podcast. Secondly, honing your storytelling and communication skills is paramount for delivering compelling narratives and maintaining audience engagement throughout your podcast episodes. Lastly, embracing continuous learning and experimentation is essential for staying relevant and evolving as a content creator in the dynamic landscape of podcasting.

Crafting content for a podcast requires you to master a conversational tone. It's a little different from blog post or website content. Content for podcasts should be exactly like how people speak.

Some ways to get started in crafting content for podcasting is to see what is popular on your current website or social media. What are people responding to and use existing content to streamline your topic selection. Having a list of topics and bullet points to touch on for each episode helps keep you focused and prevent rambling. The "ums" and long winded sentences can always be edited but having points to go back will help keep you on track and to the point.

You can quickly come up with an outline of topic points by using ChatGPT or a similar tool. Just write out discussion points in freeform and then ask ChatGPT to "give me an outline of discussion points for a podcast episode I'm recording." This works for solo episodes as well as interview episodes. If you are asking for purposes of an interview, tell the chatbot that's what you want, and it will format the outline as an interview with Q&A.

Editing is easier if you have an outline. You want to organize the discussion's progression. ChatGPT can help with this, but you really need to use your own thought process, so do that instead. I find that when I have the outline set, it's good to send it to the interview subject so they can start thinking about what they'll be discussing.

The best thing you can do to engage with a podcast audience is to pretend you're recording the episode for just one person. For example, don't say, "Welcome everyone..." That's a signal that you're talking to lots of people, which is not how the listener experiences your content. They are listening by themselves, not in an auditorium. At the end you can close by saying, "I look forward to being back again with you next week."

Releasing on a regular schedule is vital. If you can't commit to once a week, then do it twice a month. If you can't do that (or if it feels too burdensome at first), then shoot for once a month. Optimize for quality and consistency first and foremost. That's what will help you achieve maximum success in the long run.

Don't overthink or overcomplicate the process. Make it simple and keep it as easy as possible to help you maintain consistency, especially when you're starting out. You can always make episodes longer or more frequent as you get better and feel more comfortable creating episodes. Simplicity = velocity, as a wise person once said.